Store Leadership
Pros
-Great work environment, fun culture, team focused. -Dependant upon your STL, you have a lot of freedom to be your own business owner. As an ETL you're in charge and run a group of team leaders and their team members. It's your responsibility to make decisions and take complete ownership. - What drives me to come to work everyday is my team. Once you develop and establish your team there is a sense of family. -I personally love to develop, train, and coach my team. As their ETL, I am responsible for their growth and guidance. - The pay is fantastic. I was hired directly out of college as a Sr. Team Leader making $18/hr and within 5 years increased $50k as an ETL, essentially $10k/year increase. If you perform you'll be compensated well. -Not only does Target pay well, their overall compensation package is great! Benefits, discounts, incentives, etc! -Target's leadership training is phenomenal. As an ETL you'll go through "business college" for 6 weeks, then in role will go through various training seminars, and leadership classes. Target is very passionate about their leaders and their development.
Cons
-Specifically as a Sales Floor/Guest Experience ETL you are responsible for essentially every department in the store apart from Logistics (Front end, Food Ave, Starbucks, Hardlines, Softlines, Consumables, Visual Merchandising, Electronics, Seasonal). It will be extremely overwhelming and tough to manage and have successful "Green" running workcenters if you don't have solid Team Leaders in those specific workcenters. The company, over the past few years, has consolidated store leadership positions (Team leader and ETL). A store's leadership organizational chart is based on volume. The store would run a lot smoother and it would be a lot less stressful if they were additional ETL's or TL's above high capacity workcenters. -You'll work long hours, especially during the holidays and if you're store/workcenter are broken. The long hours will get to you and could break you if you don't see results overtime. You will get burnt out. The key, as an ETL, is to manage your TL's well, not to take on everything yourself. You'll fail. -Not only are they eliminating leadership positions in stores, they are also condensing district and group level positions. Because of this there are less opportunities for leaders in stores to move into a district/group role. There isn't as much advancement upwards once you're in stores. Groups made up of 7 districts are now condensed to 4 districts, eliminating BP (Business Partner) roles and DTL roles. This is obviously a great way to cut major costs, but as a leader in the store looking to advanced out you'll have to be patient and potentially be willing to relocate. -Like most companies, in my experience, Target plays favoritism and politics to an extent. - Due to difficulties making financial goals as a company Target has been cutting back on spending budgets in stores, one specifically being Team Builds! Team builds were a time for ETL's and STL's to go out together outside of work and socialize. It was a great team building opportunity, but now those are eliminated :( - District level expectations at times can be unrealistic. It seems District and Group leaders who have been out of store for years forget the struggles and obstacles stores face.